The Moroccan experience on Meteoritics and Planetary Science

Morocco is a treasure house of meteorites, most meteorites accessible to scientists and collectors in all over the world are originated from Morocco and surrounding countries. Collection of meteorites is essentially done in hot and cold deserts. Morocco has a large and safe Sahara where many nomads are living. A big community of meteorite hunters is well established. Nomads and hunters are good observers, they learned by practicing how to make the difference between terrestrial and extra-terrestrial rocks that represent an important source of revenue for them. Those meteorites are almost all exported. All classes of meteorites are found in the hot deserts including many rare and important for scientific research ones.

Since 2001, our team in the Hassan II University of Casablanca Faculty of Science Ain Chock is working on the promotion of meteorites in Morocco, Arab countries and Africa. Cosmochemistry courses has been introduced to the national curricula. Many PhD thesis has been prepared and defended. Since 2004 meteorite falls in Morocco have been classified and submitted to the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society by our team, including the exceptional fifth Martian meteorite fall in Morocco “Tissint”. Many valuable papers have been published on these falls.

On 2019, ATTARIK Foundation for Meteoritics and Planetary Science was created by our team and a group of passionate people. The aim of ATTARIK is to support the research of the PhD students on Planetary Sciences and to disseminate sciences through youth in cities and countryside. The Africa Initiative for Planetary and Space Science was launched on 2016 in Cape Town has similar objectives.

The Moroccan experience can be a good reference to development of planetary sciences in Africa and the Arab countries.